The Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences: Technical Sciences (Bull.Pol. Ac.: Tech.) is published bimonthly by the Division IV Engineering Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, since the beginning of the existence of the PAS in 1952. The journal is peer‐reviewed and is published both in printed and electronic form. It is established for the publication of original high quality papers from multidisciplinary Engineering sciences with the following topics preferred: Artificial and Computational Intelligence, Biomedical Engineering and Biotechnology, Civil Engineering, Control, Informatics and Robotics, Electronics, Telecommunication and Optoelectronics, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, Thermodynamics, Material Science and Nanotechnology, Power Systems and Power Electronics.

Journal Metrics: JCR Impact Factor 2018: 1.361, 5 Year Impact Factor: 1.323, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) 2017: 0.319, Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) 2017: 1.005, CiteScore 2017: 1.27, The Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education 2017: 25 points.

Abbreviations/Acronym: Journal citation: Bull. Pol. Ac.: Tech., ISO: Bull. Pol. Acad. Sci.-Tech. Sci., JCR Abbrev: B POL ACAD SCI-TECH Acronym in the Editorial System: BPASTS.

The hydronym Szywra refers to the small river in the Warta basin flowing in the central part of Greater Poland. Although its name remained unclear for most of the researchers, it was believed to be of Pre-Slavic or Balto-Slavic origin. The paper reveals that these hypotheses were based on the wrong interpretation of the source material, and provides a new etymology for the name Szywra. Based on the critical analysis of all of the reachable records of names referring to the river Szywra, it has been proven that its Polish name is an adaptation of the former German name Schieferbach. Such a process was possible due to the long-term bilingual situation in the region of Greater Poland.

The paper is devoted to the origin of a set of supposedly related Polish place names pointing to a Slavic proto-form *žьgъrʹь. Its main results can be summarized as follows: — The supposed topographic appellative is preserved in four to seven Polish, place or terrain names in Central and Northern Poland. Its precise meaning and etymology is not quite clear. — Nevertheless, it cannot be excluded that a derivative of this rare word was preserved in Montenegro as žàgrica ʽslope’, the exact proto-form of which, however, cannot be established with certainty for the moment. The Slovak place name Žehra could be related as well. — An etymology is considered which attaches *žьgъrʹь < *gigura- to the reduplicated root contained, e.g., in Old Indic jígāti. — The name of a ford on the Orzyc river (northeastern Poland), attested in the middle 14th century as Old Prussian Zingurbrast and Old Polish Żgierz should be considered rather as an originally Slavic (Proto- or Old Polish) toponym.

The text, inspired by the book in question, is devoted to contemporary investigations of Slovak terrain names, presenting them to the Polish reader. The main questions discussed are perspectives of a study of the archaic lexical stock, chiefly of Slavic origin, conserved in Slovak toponymy, as well as the current organization of the dictionary entry, which is judged to be far from optimal. Some corrections to the entries in A- regarding concrete etymological solutions are suggested as well.